


Triage

by Ara_Sigyrn (AraSigyrn), deannawol



Series: Friday Night Firefight - Bad Nights and Big Cities [12]
Category: Adam Lambert (Musician), American Idol RPF, Kris Allen (Musician)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, M/M, aftermath of violent crime, character peril, dark themes, medical complications
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-10
Updated: 2013-02-10
Packaged: 2017-11-28 20:22:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/678527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AraSigyrn/pseuds/Ara_Sigyrn, https://archiveofourown.org/users/deannawol/pseuds/deannawol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of LA, Adam struggles to pick up Kris' pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Triage

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little darker than some of the other interval fics. It's emotionally heavy and bleak. Read the warnings before you continue.

_**Emergency Thoracic Surgery** _

 

Waiting rooms were bland places, meant for short stays and a fast turnaround.  People came and went every minute, sitting down barely long enough to have a cup of coffee before going through the double doors to see their loved ones, dragging kids and families with them.  The posters on the walls didn’t change.  They didn’t have to.  People saw them once and never again, or at least, that’s how it was supposed to be. 

Adam could recite every piece of literature in the waiting room by heart, even the four-year-old magazine subscriptions on the cheap and battered PADDs piled up on the table at the corner of the room.  He huffed a breath and leaned back against the wall, the cool plas-crete walls easing his tension headache. 

Through those double doors, down on the left, was an operating theater, and laid out on the table was Kris surrounded by doctors and nurses and more equipment than they had in their spare room.  It was the fourth time he’d been in there since Choppah, and this was the fourth time that Adam had been relegated to the waiting room.  Allison and Cale were speeding their way in as he just sat here.

He hated this, really hated this.  He wasn’t good at waiting for his morning coffee, much less when Kris was riding the edge between life and death.  He’d say that it was becoming routine, but it wasn’t.  Each time it was slightly different and each time it damned near stopped Adam’s heart.  Each time, he thought they were past it, thought they were safe, then... One minute Kris was talking and laughing and everything was fine and then…  Everything changed.  Lips tinged with blue, gasping for air, fingers clawing Adam’s shirt as he fought for breath. 

Adam was just another body as they rushed Kris in, holding Kris’ hand every step of the way, trying his best to keep him calm but once he was under anesthesia, Adam was escorted out and they all went to work, leaving Adam out in the waiting room on his own with nothing but worst case scenarios going around his head.

Not that he wanted to stay in there.  He didn’t.  Adam had been a merc for most of his life.  He’d seen blood by the gallon and enough violence for a lifetime – Hell, he’d been the cause of a lot of it – but there was something unsettling about the cold hard reality of a surgeon’s knife.  No adrenaline, no consideration, just surgical steel cutting Kris’ chest open and…  Adam shook his head, shaking the image loose before it could fester.

Minutes dragged by and seconds stretched into hours.  A code blue call-out shocked him to his feet and Adam found himself watching through the tiny windows on the double doors as even more equipment was rolled in and more people came running.  Cale’s hand was on his shoulder, pulling him back but Adam wasn’t moving.  He couldn’t move.  Not until the doctor came out, gown still splattered with blood, two hours later and told him that Kris was critical but stable.  Who’d have thought that those would be the best words he’d ever heard? 

 

_**Paradoxical Movement of the Chest Wall from Flail Chest Syndrome** _

 

Complications were now a way of life.  Adam knew more about medicine now than most of Nakamura's final year residents.  Drug interactions, bacterial infections, watch-signs for every major condition that Kris could possibly develop, Adam knew it all but it didn’t make it any better.  Adamstill couldn’t do more than watch and call for help when something happened.  He was having full on arguments with board certified doctors every time that something went wrong, or that was how it felt.  They thought that he was overreacting. 

He wasn’t. 

He knew Kris better than anyone else except maybe Cale, and he’d been there right beside Kris when Choppah had tried to take him apart.  He’d seen every strike, every kick, every little tiny cut.  He’d seen Kris die so many times now and fought to keep him breathing more than once.   So when the latest little piss-ant intern told him to sit back down before he was thrown out, Adam fucking lost it.  The nurses came running, bringing security with them, but it had been the intern who’d been escorted away when they saw what Adam did. 

Kris’ breathing was labored and he bit his lip with every breath.  Even the heavy-duty painkillers weren’t taking the edge off this time.  Choppah had broken four of Kris’ ribs.  The doctors had broken a few more as they’d tried to fix Kris up, but all that happened was that they made it worse.  Kris had covered it up in some misguided attempt to keep Adam from worrying.  Adam still wasn't sure how long Kris had been hiding the pain but it hadn’t worked and when Adam had pulled back the sheet…  He breathed in now, and part of his side bulged out.  He breathed out and it dipped in. 

More surgery, more nanites – Adam was sure that Kris had to be approaching nanite toxicity – and Adam couldn’t hold off any longer.  He called Nakamura and the man cursed him out for not calling sooner.  Turned out that he was already on his way, already looking at the biomonitor readout, already fighting with hospital administrators to get privileges at LA Central Hospital without Adam having to say a word.  Just having him near made Adam a little calmer and Adam could have kissed the man when he saw him walking down the hallway towards Kris’ room.

Nakamura was the best in the business and just having him here, his fleet of junior doctors and nurses in tow made Adam feel that things were back under control.

 

_**Scaphoid Fracture close to the Proximal Pole** _

 

Gunfire decided that Adam’s recovery period was over almost as soon as they hit NYC.  His phone started buzzing as he helped Kris out of the airport and hadn’t stopped since.  Cale came over to watch Kris as Adam had conference call after conference call, and that was good, because Cale operated under the same rules as Adam.  Friends could come visit, but as soon as they started to tire Kris out, they were out the door with the barest of apologies. 

Most were fairly benign visitors, calling around to see how he was and helping keep Kris sane but there were a few that Adam was close to kicking out permanently.  One of those was Glitch, hard as that was to believe.

There was an unspoken tension between Glitch and Kris that had spilled over into shouting matches a few times, but neither would talk to Adam about it and he didn't want to press Kris too hard.  Stress was bad for Kris and Adam couldn’t bring himself to do anything that might endanger Kris' precarious recovery.  He didn't think to ban Glitch's visits, which made it his fault.

Gunfire suits were pushing hard to get him back into the studio: Gunfire’s PR team pressing him for interviews and press statements: Lillian was arranging phone calls with media stations and vidlinks with the online blogs. Adam’s was attention was split a little too much and Glitch managed to get past him.

The next thing Adam heard was Kris’ cry of pain.  Adam pushed Glitch out of the way and was under the shower a split-second later, Kris in his lap as Adam cradled his arm.  Kris’ biomonitor was redlining thanks to the adrenaline spike and Adam shouted at Glitch to get out, harsher than he needed to be but Glitch was gone.  Kris’ arm was starting to swell already and Adam knew a fracture when he saw one.  Pain meds, an anti-nausea patch, an anti-inflammatory, and Kris was in the rental car with Adam, curled into his side.

The nurses in the ER greeted them by name; never a good sign but it meant that they jumped the queue and got straight into an exam room.  Adam wasn't complaining. The doctor on ER duty that night was new and he glared at Adam when he found out that Adam had given Kris painkillers.  The nurses talked gently to Kris as they spread the nanites out over his arm and hand and insisted that he stay with them for another couple of hours, just in case.  Adam was getting used to the cold hardness of hospital mattresses as he stretched out as much as he could on the too-small bed, Kris drawn in close and sleeping fitfully against his chest.

Adam's heart-rate was easing back into the green-zone as Kris breathed against his collarbone. He’d apologise to Glitch in the morning.  Probably. 

 

_**Gucci-acquired Haemophilus Influenzae leading to Bilateral Lobar Pneumonia** _

 

Cheeks, to Adam's surprise, was every bit as protective of Kris as Adam and Cale.  It shouldn't have come as such a surprise.  Cheeks had always been fiercely loyal to his friends.  God knew Kris was fragile enough to inspire protective impulses in a cop but Cheeks' protectiveness was tempered with an unerring sense of when Kris needed to get out of the apartment.  Adam wasn't entirely happy that Cheeks was going to take Kris out but he'd taken the time to put together an agenda for the day and a list of reasons why Kris needed the escape, not least of them being that Kris needed clothes.   In the five months since LA, Kris had lost a lot of weight and none of his trousers fit him without a judicious use of belts. 

Ordinarily, Adam would have just taken him to see Drey but Kris still had panic attacks when something reminded him of Choppah and Gee was a close enough fit that Adam wasn't taking the chance.  Cheeks agreed and plotted a route right through the fashion district.  Versace, Dolce, Gucci, there was nowhere worth visiting left off the list.   He'd even planned for lunch and rest breaks, dragging Scarlett in for security when it looked like Adam wouldn't be able to make it. Carly was pulled into the planning too, but Adam was fairly sure that Cheeks only included her because he didn't like her current taste in fashion accessories. 

It was a side of Cheeks that Adam hadn't seen in years but it went a long way to reminding Adam of the guy that Cheeks had been before the streets had hardened him.   Kris went along with the plan for the most part, getting animated as he swapped snark for snark with Cheeks. Adam had missed this Kris and if a shopping trip with Cheeks was what it took to bring him out then it was worth every cred on the 50K cred chip that Adam snuck to Scarlett. 

Adam had a different opinion four days later when he was back in the ER watching Kris struggling to breathe.   Pneumonia, the doctor said, and Kris was sent for a barrage of tests while Adam was given a magazine and told to wait.  It must have been someone's idea of a joke when they handed him the PADD with an old copy of Vogue, the S&M shoot.

Adam tossed the PADD aside and just paced nervously as he waited for Kris to return.   The doctor came back first and spent ten solid minutes berating Adam about how fragile Kris was and how he shouldn't have been outside, how Adam had to take better care of Kris and watch for the first signs of infection as if that wasn't how Adam spent his every waking moment.

Kris' biomonitor readings had been permanently incorporated into Adam's inner eye display, updating every .05 milliseconds.  He had alerts set up with the Helpers ready to let him know the second that Kris was in trouble.  That was what had woken him in the middle of the night when Kris having difficulty breathing: the Helpers had pinged Adam. When Adam was allowed back into Kris' room, he was hooked up to a drip loaded with antibiotics and electrolytes. A heart monitor beeped too slow on the other side of the bed and Kris was asleep.   Adam folded himself into the plastic chair beside Kris, took his hand and waited for this latest nightmare to end. 

 

_**Malignant Hyperthermia caused by Drug Interactions** _

 

Kris was too hot and no one was listening.  A hundred and change, and burning up, but everyone was too busy to help.   Adam wanted to shoot somebody.  A major attack on a corp meant an ER filled to the doors with Gold-level account holders, they had other things on their minds but Adam didn't.  He held the cold compress against Kris' forehead and dug out his phone, dialing Doc Ramsey.   It was his day off, his first in two weeks, but Adam didn't care.   He read off Kris' stats and the doc cursed and promised to be there as soon as he could.

Adam was on the bed with Kris, holding him close when Ramsey arrived.  It was only partially out of a need to be close.  Kris was overheating and tearing at his clothes, the covers on the bed, everything, and Adam needed him to calm down, so he was holding him, one hand keeping the compress in place and the other pinning Kris to his chest.  Adam ran cold, thanks to his cyberware, and that was a good thing right now.  He was singing to Kris too, something that he’d been working on that wasn’t quite finished yet.  It didn't matter; Kris was too far gone to hear anything but the fact of Adam's singing. 

Ramsey raised an eyebrow but said nothing, working around Adam where he could and tapping him to move when he couldn’t.  The readings came back clear, no matter what Ramsey tried and Adam’s voice flickered and broke when Ramsey said it, but Ramsey wasn’t done yet.  He tried one test after another until he had a never ending list of results on his PADD, but none of them said anything of worth.  He went from the chart to the readings to the results and back again, but there was _nothing there_.  Nakamura chimed in, via conference, and finally came up with an answer, but it wasn’t one that anyone liked.  Nanite toxicity.  Kris’ body was tearing itself apart thanks to all the medicines that he’d been given. 

There were more drugs and nanites in Kris’ bloodstream than backstage at a classic rock concert and they were having a down and dirty fight to see which interaction could kill Kris fastest.  Problem was that neither Nakamura nor Ramsey had any idea which of the latest three drugs was causing this reaction.  Adam tuned the docs out when Kris started to cry against his chest.  He felt helpless as he watched Kris, tears streaking his cheeks and lip clenched hard between his teeth. 

Glitch must have thought that Adam didn’t see him when he showed up, staying outside the room.  Nakamura went out to speak to him, and Adam saw him handing over a vial of something, more nanites by the looks of it and half a minute later, Nakamura was injecting it straight into Kris’ ports.  Kris arched and bucked and screamed loud enough to bring an entire floor of nurses running, and it was all that Adam could do to hold him still but it worked.  No drugs, no nanites, nothing but blood in his bloodstream. 

It took a while, but Kris’ fever came down and he fell asleep, totally exhausted.  Adam stayed awake just long enough to thank Nakamura and Ramsey.

 

_**Intermittant Anterograde Amnesia** _

 

The mind was a funny thing, that was what Nakamura said, but that didn’t explain what was happening to Kris.  One minute he’d be fine, the next minute completely lost; memory gone and no idea about anything that had happened for hours before. 

The first time that Adam noticed it was about a month after he was cleared of pneumonia.  Kris had cooked despite Adam’s objections.  It was date night and the first time that Kris had been healthy enough to be out of bed for the entire afternoon.  He’d grilled two huge steaks, made his own bourbon BBQ sauce and all the sides, and Adam’s mouth was watering from the smells.  They’d eaten on the couch with the lights lowered as an old movie played on the vidscreen.  It had been perfect.

Kris woke up the next morning and started writing out a shopping list for Adam to get; steaks, bourbon, fresh corn.  Everything that he’d need for a date night meal.  When Adam challenged him on it, Kris just told him that it was a Thursday, and looked offended that Adam needed to be told.  Adam hadn’t known what to say.  What could he say?  He’d had the best night in a long time, but for Kris, it hadn’t existed. 

Amnesia, Nakamura had said, caused by post trauma stress or similar, maybe a shorting of a connection that hadn’t shown up in the scan.  Adam was told to monitor him and keep him from doing anything stupid.  Easier said than done when Kris had no tells for when he was going to have an attack of amnesia.

The second time was worse.  It was three weeks later and Adam had gotten a call from Kris, worried and scared and in the middle of the Merc District.  No one knew how he’d gotten there, least of all Kris, and that freaked Adam out almost worse than the phone call.

It only happened twice to date, but Adam was worried.  Short of locking Kris in their apartment, there was nothing that Adam could do to stop it happening again.  Their friends were great, coming over to sit with Kris and go with him everywhere.  Cheeks had to be pushed out of the bathroom on more than one occasion but Adam could hardly hold that against him.  At least he was there.

The answer came in the form of a bracelet with a built in shocker, low voltage but enough to keep Kris from dumping his short term memory.  It wasn’t perfect and Nakamura had plans to haul Kris’ ass back down to San D to do a full scan but it was working.

 

_**Dissociative Seizures** _

 

Kris has always had nightmares.  Ever since Adam had known Kris, he’d had nightmares.  The kind that had Kris waking up in the middle of the night screaming, three or four times a week.  Adam had gotten used to them, even took a measure of pride in the fact that they gotten fewer since they'd moved to NYC.  Then LA had happened and everything changed. There was no more screaming, no more nightmares.  Instead, Kris went still, stiff, and deadly quiet, staring off into space.   It wasn’t just at night either. 

Any time that the memories surfaced, every time that Kris had a flashback, every time that Kris was startled, there was a chance that Kris would just stop.   There was no other way to describe it.  From happy and animated to nothing, in the space of a second, and then he’d fall.  Adam was there for him the first time, catching him before he hit his head on the coffee table.  It was a news report that time; a New Years review that covered the events in LA.

Adam had warned Cale, told him what had happened but he wasn’t prepared for it.  They’d both talked Kris down from panic attacks.  They’d held him until he was breathing again, but with these seizures, there was nothing they could do. 

Adam sang to him, hummed under his breath.  Old songs and new ones, didn’t matter.  He talked to Kris, held him close but he didn’t know if it helped.  Cale hummed too, country songs from back home, lullabies and serenades, as he brushed Kris’ hair out of his face. 

It wasn’t easy, it never was, but Kris would surface and cling to Adam and say that he was sorry.  For what, Adam never knew, but he held Kris tight, almost afraid to let him go.

They were getting shorter though, the seizures, and Adam had hope that one day soon, they’d be a thing of the past.  One day everything would be back to how it was.

 

 

Little by little, bit by bit, things were getting better.  Adam had to believe that. 

It would take time, but they’d get through it together.  They’d get through this like they got through Trojan and Choppah and everything else, and soon, soon he’d get to walk Kris up the aisle and exchange vows with the man he loved.  Soon, he’d get to call Kris husband.


End file.
